No Accident Read Online Free PDF Page A

tag line by the rest of the precinct. But the way Lutz said it, it wasn’t so witty.
    “With all that media attention, you didn’t do any forensics?”
    “Didn’t you read the report? We ID’d the bodies and performed autopsies, we followed all the procedures.” With that, Lutz stiffly strutted off, bouncing on his short legs. Procedures are made for guys like this , Alex thought. He overtook Lutz at a jog.
    “Yes, of course, but there was one thing that didn’t make sense for me,” Alex said. He took a copy of one of the police photographs out of his back pocket and unfolded it for the detective.
    “This photo is from your report. It shows the front end of the Viper after it was removed from the crash scene.”
    “If you say so,” Lutz said.
    “Here’s where Viper collided with the gardening truck,” Alex said. He pointed out a deep, ugly gash across the width of the Viper’s hood, near the windshield.
    “Yeah, so?”
    “So it looks like the gardening truck landed on top of the Viper, like the force went downward. The whole front end of the Viper is flattened, like an empty box after someone sits on it.”
    “Fine, so maybe the truck lands on the Viper after it explodes.”
    “But if the Viper ran into the gardening truck to start the whole collision off, like your report said, you’d expect the front end of the Viper to be crumpled inward, like an accordion.”
    “So?”
    “So, the only way this photo makes sense is if, first, the gardening truck hits the van ahead of it; second, the back end of the gardening truck flies up, maybe from the explosion, maybe from the driver slamming on the brakes. Finally, the Viper slides in under the truck, which lands on top of it, crushing the hood—like you see in the picture.”
    Alex heard the excitement growing in his voice as he explained his theory, but he couldn’t help himself. Saying it out loud, Alex felt even more sure of his theory. He looked at Lutz and held his breath, waiting for the detective’s reaction. Lutz knitted his brow as he thought about what Alex had said. He sputtered out the beginning of a response, then cut himself off and yelled at Alex. “Look, you want to depose me, go ahead and fucking depose me. Now get out of my face.”
    That was about the last response Alex expected. Lutz hurried away before Alex could follow up with another question. Lutz didn’t look back.
    Alex watched Lutz fumble with his keys trying to get into his car. Alex noted that the detective hadn’t denied what Alex showed him —that it was physically impossible for Howard Cummings to have initiated the collision.
    Was Lutz flustered because he knew he was incompetent? No one liked to be proved a fool. For a moment, Alex fantasized about a deposition of Lutz, about the little man sitting in an even littler chair and squirming under a lawyer’s questions. If Rampart’s lawyers walked through the evidence the way Alex just had, Alex knew that the truth would become obvious, and that Rampart would be collecting money from the insurers of the other cars, rather than having to pay money out to them. It wasn’t often as an investigator that you were able to disprove a police report so decisively.
    Then Alex asked himself who he was kidding. With Chip Odom in charge, the truth didn’t matter. All that mattered was that litigation was expensive—a crapshoot, to use one of Chip’s favorite words. Rampart would rush to pay a quick and easy settlement for the Cummings case, just like it always did.
    Unless  . . . Unless Alex could find evidence so clear that Chip would have to fight the case. And then Alex remembered another detail from the police report.
    Back in his truck, Alex reread the report by the cabin light. His fuzzy recollection was correct: he found a familiar name among the victims —Jorge Ramirez. Alex once helped put away an insurance scam artist with the same name. Then Alex checked his sudden excitement. Now I’m just grasping at straws , he